VI
INTERMEDIATE PERIOD
It will be noticed that Lucius, when referring to some of Quimby's works of healing known as miracles, speaks of the fact that Quimby “worked over” patients unable to walk or move their arms. Apparently, manipulation was employed to some extent in such cases, possibly because the belief still prevailed that a “fluid” passed from operator to patient. We find confirmation of this in the biographical account already quoted from.
“He sometimes,” writes George Quimby, “in cases of lameness and sprains, manipulated the limbs of the patient, and often rubbed the head with his hands, wetting them with water. He said it was so hard for the patient to believe that his mere talk with him produced the cure, that he did this rubbing simply that the patient would have more confidence in him; but he always insisted that he possessed no ‘power’ nor healing properties different from any one else, and that his manipulations conferred no beneficial effect upon the patient, although it was often the case that the patient himself thought they did.”[1]
Again, we have the testimony of a patient who remained with Mr. Quimby for several years, meeting the new comers and conversing with them both before and after they received treatment. Mr. Dresser says, “In treating a patient, after he had finished his explanations, and the silent work, which completed the treatment, he usually rubbed the head two or three minutes, in a brisk manner, for the purpose of letting the patient see that something was done. This was a measure of securing the confidence of the patient, at a time when he was starting a new practice, and stood alone in it. I knew him to make many quick cures at a distance, sometimes with persons he never saw at all. He never considered the touch of the
- ↑ New England Magazine, March, 1888, p. 272.
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